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In This Issue

• Get Your Freak On, Dorks
• (Almost) Rejected by Israeli Security
• Beaten by the Retard: Adventures in Drama
• Letters to and from the Fed's Maxima and Co.
• Columbia Hipsters Are So Shallow You Think You’re in High School
• Are You a Terrorist? The Government's Shocking Answer
• Failed Terrorist Herbie Bin Laden Marries Jewish Wife, Dabbles in Scientology
• Poetry.com: Your High School Poems are Waiting for You…
• Bottled Water: Bigger than Jesus, and now Semen Free
• Revolve magazine: The Seventeenth Seal
• I Passed the Oral but Failed the Urine
• Horribly Hassled Hermaphrodites Harangue Humanity
• Trial and Error Your Way to Perfect Genital Design
• Shot Down! : Rejections Made Simple
• Your College Essay, but with less Suck
• New Twenties Bring Back Tired Old Monopoly Money Jokes

Are you lost?" I was not lost.  I had seated myself, uncomfortably, on a concrete ledge next to a too-small-tee-shirt wearing hipster.  The hipster stared at me.  I had to respond.  

"Um, no?" I stuttered. "Is this the WBAR meet and greet?"

"Oh … that. Yeah, it’s kind of over."

To get to the "meet and greet," I fought my way through Barnard, dodging the hostile glares of angry packs of Barnard girls, descended to the bottom level of some decrepit building, navigated through a darkened cave/den/hellhole filled with mailboxes, and came, finally, to a heavy emergency-exit door that was propped open and adorned with a scrawled "WBAR" sign.  I emerged through the door to find an assorted group of hipsters, who did not even look up as I burst through the door.

"You can sign the clipboard, I guess."

My lame freshman mind raced.  I was suddenly acutely aware of my blatantly mainstream sneakers, my utterly not-obscure tee-shirt that was un-emblazoned with an unknown band or so-dumb-it’s-cool phrase.  My cheeks reddened as I grew conscious of my complete lack of hip accessories, leather, or anything black.  How could I have neglected to take a trip to Urban Outfitters to stock up on the requisite eighties-revival duds?

I made an attempt for the clipboard, but achieved only a sideways glare from the clipboard lady.  An awkward five minutes had passed.  I stared in disbelief at the back of her head.  At that point, I realized that it was no use; I admitted defeat.  As I dragged my blonde, un-hip self out, I heard clipboard-lady saying, "Welcome to the WBAR meet-and-greet.  Would you like to sign our e-mail list?"  My heart leaped! Was she talking to me?  I looked back.  Two (decidedly hip) brunettes.  It figured.

Why is everyone at this school so fucking cool? For a school that prides itself on achieving a "diverse" student body, the admissions committee seems to have overdosed on the "super-cool" faction. And the best part about these people is that they all know it.

Take, for example all those people who linger outside of Butler.  They are so damn cool, and so damn aware of it! A poor freshman like myself can’t even make her way to dinner at John Jay without passing through their intimidating hordes.  They’re always standing there smoking alone, outfitted in their sophisticated leather jackets, with brooding looks on their faces as if to say, "I can only be taken from my deep thoughts in order to smoke this cigarette.  Do not so much as bump me, underclassman. God, I am cool."

The only people who are cooler than the Butler-smokers and WBAR are probably people who live or have lived in Carman. Carman is just an incredibly cool place.

Like a hipster, Carman does not really "fit in."  Carman knows it is ugly, and it is okay with that, in fact, it wants to look that way.  Carman stares down at all of the boring, mainstream buildings, with their typical green roofs and beautifully designed entryways and laughs.  Carman sports its gaudy, bright, geometrically patterned floor tiles like a record store clerk’s argyle sweater, and lets its entryway get just disheveled enough, like the messy, outgrown hair of a college radio DJ.  The only building Carman will ever really talk to is East Campus, and together they mock Furnald behind its back.

Consider, for example, a typical introductory conversation between freshmen:

"Where do you live?"

"I live on Carman 11.  What about you?"

(Uncomfortable pause)

"Oh, I live in John Jay."

At this point the Carman person inwardly smirks, and the John Jay kid tells himself that he really does like John Jay.

Even worse is the spectacle that inevitably occurs when a Carman-dwelling freshman meets a Carman alum. If, by some miracle, the two lived on the same floor, they inevitably feel an immediate affinity for each other, and proceed to bask happily in the rays of their mutual coolness.

The list of cool people goes on and on—students who discuss postmodernism, kids who spent years traveling in foreign countries, students who knew what Lacoste was before they came to Columbia, students who don’t laugh at the idea of someone actually being a member of a Yacht club, people who genuinely like the sound of Sigur Ros, and people who watch Adult Swim.

I can only hope that one day I, too, can be the type of person who is cool enough to pensivly smoke unfiltered cigarettes outside of university buildings.  Oh, to dream...